Cyclone.—Meridian, Miss., met fearful destruction in the center of a cyclonic storm which passed over that city March 2. About a score of people, white and colored are known to have been killed, and damage resulted to property to the extent of $1,000,000. Many others were injured. Four whole blocks were devastated; and it all occurred in the space of two minutes. How puny are all the works of men in the face of these gigantic forces of perverted nature. The mightiest structures are but toys in the tornado, and the strongest buildings are shattered by the earthquake, and it all comes on account of sin.
The Brevity of Human Life
The brevity of human life ought to be deemed sufficient reason for carefully preserving it and making the most of it. But the great majority, by their manner of life, their intemperate eating, drinking, working, etc., do much in the way of making life even shorter, besides making a poor use of the time they do have. Sadder still, however, is the growing mania for direct suicide, abruptly shutting off the current. As an instance, it is officially reported that in the one city of Cleveland, Ohio, there have occurred eighty-six suicides within the last nine months. And throughout Christendom the tendency toward spiritual suicide, by perversion of the Word of God, is far more marked.
United States Manufacturing and Wholesale Trade
The value of manufactures for the year 1905 in the United States reached the vast sum of $1,290,874,000, an increase for the year of 25 per cent. The wholesale trade of the year totaled $1,521,937,000, an increase of more than $207,000,000 over the year before.